Fic: Noisy-le-Sec, Part III
The next time Athos found himself awakening, the first thing he was aware of was that he had been bodily wrapped up in something that his mind could best identify as “naked man.” He opened his left eye, somewhat cautiously, not wanting to move his head and let on that he was wake, and had received visual proof that he was, in fact, completely covered by Aramis’s naked form. From that state of things, Athos inferred he must have been asleep for quite some time again.
“Is this still part of my treatment?” he finally whispered in his friend’s ear, so conveniently located near his lips.
“Eastern sages teach us that heat is the best therapy for chronic pain.”
“My kind of chronic pain cannot be treated with a little heat,” Athos sighed.
“That’s why it’s fortunate that my body produces quite a bit more than a little heat.”
“Aramis,” Athos began, trying to shift his body, but he was immediately prevented from further elocution by his friend’s mouth closing over his own.
“I wish I could keep you here forever, just like this,” Aramis said with a wicked grin, in between kissing and nibbling on Athos’s lower lip.
“Then why did you leave?”
“Give me more time before we have that discussion,” Aramis frowned, kissing the man imprisoned underneath him with more insistence.
“I think we’ve had enough time,” Athos sighed, a battle being waged between his mind and his body, with the body having only a slight advantage this time. Aramis wantonly licked his neck and invaded his mouth again.
“You still taste like Heaven,” Aramis said with the same ravenous look Athos was used to receiving from him back when they were both musketeers.
“We were Heaven,” the older man responded.
Those words seemed to break through the veil that Aramis was trying so hard to draw over his expression. It looked as if something broke in his face, and he fixed both eyes doggedly in the hollow of Athos’s neck, fighting back what Athos would have assumed to be tears, had he ever known Aramis to be capable of crying.
“The only Heaven I’ve ever found, in fact,” Aramis conceded in a choked up voice, sliding his body off his prisoner and turning over onto his back to lie next to him. Athos reached out and took the other man’s hand in his and brought it to his lips.
“You broke my heart,” he said, simply.
“As you always knew I would.”
“It didn’t make it hurt any less, the foreknowledge.”
“Did my departure send you right into his arms, as I feared it would?” Aramis suddenly inquired.
“Not at first,” Athos responded with a tinge of something quite merciless in his voice. “And, even then, not for long.”
“How long did you wait?” Aramis asked, becoming acutely aware that their conversation was becoming a duel.
“I waited until about the time that word trickled down from one or the other of the many lovers of your Whore of Tours that you had taken holy orders.”
“Ah,” was somehow the only thing Aramis found himself saying.
“Rumor had it at the time that it was the convent at Nancy.”
“Yes, well, I did not last there long.”
“That’s what I found out when I started looking for you there.”
“So you were looking for me?” Aramis asked, triumphantly.
“After I had left the service,” Athos confirmed.
“When was that, if I may?”
“Last year.”
“You served under him for some time then,” bitterness and jealousy seeped through in this question as he lifted himself onto his elbow and eyed his companion with measured provocation.
“Not under him,” Athos responded, throwing Aramis his own challenging look. Thrust and parry, he thought to himself, as per usual.
“That is of little consolation to me,” Aramis declared, backing down.
“What did you expect me to do, Aramis? Lie down and die?” Athos sat up and placed his throbbing head into the palms of his hands. “I think I almost did,” he admitted, in much quieter voice. “In either case, I have not seen him since I left the service and, given how things left off, I’m not sure that he’ll be seeking me out any time soon.”
“I moved to this convent to be closer to Paris,” Aramis said, still struggling with his emotions, not quite knowing what to do with his hands. “But you had already departed for Blois.”
“You knew where I was?” Athos turned to him, incredulously.
“I made my own inquiries.”
“A convenient piece of inheritance,” Athos sighed.
“The château Bragelonne,” Aramis nodded, absentmindedly. “I was wondering if you’d actually return to La Fère.”
“To die, maybe,” Athos smirked. Aramis reached out and put his hand on Athos’s back, between his shoulder blades, feeling the muscles there tense up underneath his fingers.
“Will you never forgive me?”
“WHY DID YOU LEAVE?” Athos shouted, at last, no longer able to ignore the burning question consuming him. “How do you expect me to forgive something that I do not understand?” Aramis drew back a bit, as if fearing another physical outburst from his companion, but said nothing. “Can you tell me why? I did nothing wrong but love you. And I know you loved me too. What did I do to drive you away?”
Aramis tried to reach out to touch his friend again, but his hands were slapped away.
“No! You can’t make this right by touching me! Answer me, damn you!”
“It had nothing to do with you,” Aramis began, averting his eyes, and speaking very quickly. “Please, don’t tell me you thought that whole time that it was ever your fault! My choice was made long before I ever met you. It was because of you that I stayed a musketeer for as long as I had. But my leaving had nothing to do with you! I may have been very young then, but I had made a promise to God, and I always intended to keep that promise.”
“What about the promises you made to me?” Athos asked, pleadingly.
“I never lied to you. I never told you I would stay forever. You knew.”
“You really believe that you did the right thing, don’t you?” Athos asked, some kind of a strange understanding dawning on him.
“I knew that I did wrong by you, but I also knew that if I had told you I intended to return to the fold of the Church that you would try to stop me. Nay, that you would stop me!”
Athos could take this conversation no more. Turning away again, he shut his eyes and dropped his head upon his chest. Aramis’s eyes followed him still from the other end of the bed. The desire to reach out and to hold him, to touch with his lips, to caress that wild mane of tumbling black hair, was rising up strongly again, but Aramis fought it back. He would not want his actions to be misinterpreted as pity.
“For what it’s worth,” Aramis whispered, “I am sorry. What do I have to do to make you forgive me?”
“It’s quite beautiful there, you know, at Bragelonne” Athos said, not turning around, his mind not recognizing the question posed to him. “There are these… old… chestnut trees.”
“Athos,” giving in to his need for physical contact, Aramis wrapped his arms around his friend and rested his head against the back of his shoulder.
“No one would have to know anything about me there, nor anyone else who was there with me,” Athos continued. “In the country side, people are very good at pretending to mind their own business.”
“Athos, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you coming away with me.” Athos turned around to face his friend. “Come with me to Bragelonne.”
“You’re serious?” Aramis asked, widening his eyes in wonderment.
“Yes, I’m serious!”
“What would I do there?” Aramis inquired, before he could stop himself, because as soon as these words were out of his mouth, he wished he could take them back. Athos’s face clouded over and became an impassive mask again.
“Well, that answers my questions, I suppose.”
“No, you don’t understand. Athos, I love you! My life is quite literally unbearable without you!”
“You seem to bear it quite well enough.”
“It’s just that… I am what I am! And in Bragelonne, I will be nothing. What will I be there?”
“Well, I don’t know, Aramis. My lover? My friend? My everything?”
“That’s not how others would see it. I would be your kept woman… well, without the woman part.”
“I would hope that the sanctity of the Church would have put the Abbé d’Herblay far beyond the reach of such accusations,” Athos offered with a small laugh.
“Athos, as ridiculous as you find it, this is my job.”
“Nay, it is your vocation.”
“Whatever you call it, this is the path I am on now. And you want me to give it all up? My career and, for all intents and purposes, my living?”
“I apologize,” Athos said with feigned supplication. “I was misled by your protestations that you loved me.”
“I do,” Aramis maintained, yet feeling this bout slipping away from him. “I love you more than I love anyone else in the world. But…”
“Not enough,” Athos helpfully finished the thought for him.
“There is nothing for me in Blois,” Aramis concluded, resigned.
“Well then,” Athos said, climbing out of the bed and walking over to the armchair upon which he could see his riding clothes. “If and when the fancy strikes you, you can always find me there.”
“Please, don’t leave like this,” Aramis begged, despite the pangs of pride still tormenting him.
“Oh, do not worry yourself, my love. I shall leave through the window.”
“I can’t let you go like this!”
“I feel quite well enough now,” Athos proceeded while putting his clothes back on. “Thank you for taking care of me in my feverish state, by the way.”
“Please, don’t torment me with your hatred,” Aramis found that he could say absolutely nothing that would make this situation better.
“Hatred?” Athos veered on him. “No, Aramis, that is decidedly not what I feel for you!”
“Then stay! At least a while longer.”
“What is the point? I can guarantee you, from personal experience, that if I leave you later after more of the same, it will not, in fact, lessen the pain of my departure.” Athos resumed outfitting himself. “If you don’t love me enough to leave with me, at least love me enough to let me leave you while I still have the strength to do so,” he added, speaking practically into his doublet.
“I ache and burn without you,” Aramis uttered in a state of such despondency that Athos barely recognized him at that moment.
“Well, apparently, you know where to find me,” Athos said, evenly, strapping his sword back onto his belt and wrapping his cloak around himself. Then, as if feeling torn between dark humor and exasperation, he added, “It’s difficult to make a grandiose exit by use of a rope ladder and through a window.”
“If you whistle, Bazin will bring your horse to the window and you can jump into the saddle,” Aramis suggested, sitting back down on the bed in his most defeated of postures.
“That would be a markedly more dramatic way to leave,” said Athos, opening the window and whistling. To his surprise, a few minutes later, a man appeared from the trees, holding what was definitely his own horse by the bridle. “I take it all back. The imbecile has his uses.”
“Thank you,” Aramis responded in a hollow voice.
“Good-bye, Aramis.”
Athos paused by the window and looked back, as if wanting to say something else. Their eyes met, and, possibly this was enough for Athos, because he decided against speaking, and, mounting the windowpane, he leapt out and onto his horse’s saddle.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was clear after the first few hours in the saddle that he should probably, in fact, not be in the saddle at all. He wasn’t sure whether he had eaten anything during the entire time that he was laid up at the convent, but luckily, or possibly due to no luck at all, his canteen had been refilled with water, so at least he knew he would not be dying of thirst on the road. He took a long swallow, dug his heels deeper into his stirrups and clung to the mane of his horse as if it was his last thread to life. At least, he thought, the physical pain was keeping him from feeling the other pain that he would surely feel again when he had more time to process everything that had occurred. It would be dawn soon, and then he’d be able to get his bearings, and possibly (his mind salivated at the thought of it) he would find some place to sleep again. He just had to stay in the saddle until such time.
By dawn’s break, his horse, perceptive to his rider’s needs, had slowed down to a leisurely walk, and Athos was at a point of contemplating just going to sleep in the middle of the road. Suddenly, the sound of horses snapped Athos’s attention back to the present situation and out of his physical misery. The banging of the multiple hooves against the ground sounded like a carriage approaching, and Athos pulled his horse out of the way to allow them to pass. A carriage, drawn by a team of magnificent stallions, did materialize out of the dust, but instead of passing our weary rider, the coachman brought the horses to a halt when they were alongside Athos. Realizing he was in no condition to be attacked or abducted, Athos nonetheless veered his horse towards the windows of the carriage, but tightened the reigns when noticing the Jesuit crest on the side of the door.
The gate of the carriage swung open and a cool voice echoed from within, making Athos question whether he was, in fact, dreaming.
“Get in,” the voice commanded.
“What the…?”
“Get in,” the voice repeated, with more insistence. “You know you should not be riding in your condition, you fool.”
Athos dismounted and approached the carriage, still questioning his sanity and wakefulness. A look into the carriage revealed, to Athos’s greatest confusion, the Abbé d’Herblay, attired entirely like Aramis, in his finest riding clothes and armed to the teeth.
“Will you get in, you idiot?” the apparition demanded again.
“Are you going to abduct me and force me to join your order?” Athos asked, cocking one of his eyebrows, suspiciously.
“This carriage will take us as far as Saint-Arnoult. We’ll travel by post from there.”
“Where… are we going?” Athos inquired, just as bewildered as before, yet obediently situating himself into the carriage.
“To Blois, of course,” Aramis responded with a shrug of his shoulders, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Bazin will follow later and bring your horse.”
“Aramis, you don’t have to…” but Athos was interrupted by his friend’s hand over his mouth.
“I do have to. Because I meant what I said earlier about belonging only to you. And I prefer your forgiveness to God’s forgiveness. And it lies in Blois, and that is where we’re going.” He lifted his hand and allowed Athos the opportunity to speak again. “Now, do you have anything to say for yourself?”
Athos shook his head, a bit dumbfounded.
“You stole my crucifix,” Aramis explained, giving Athos a small wag of the finger. “Why?”
“I was jealous of your other lover.”
“You never change. Anything else you’d like to tell me?”
“Thank you for saving me again?”
“I do what I can,” Aramis said dismissively, yet his face shone forth with a smile as beautiful as anything Athos recalled from a time when they needed no words and there was nothing yet to forgive each other for.
Would you like to read it again? Part 1 Part 2